SEO Glossary

I’m finding that there is quite a bit of mystery, a blackbox effect, around SEO and Search Marketing and it’s power to convey important messages to the right people. The fact is most corporations do not have adequate SEO in-house resources and many lack the ability to evaluate Search Marketers. Even the unique terminology presents hurdles. I’ve presented a list below, and will try to keep it up-to date.

Accessibility is the practice of making websites usable by disabled people – especially blind people.
accessible websites tend to have better search engine rankings than inaccessible websites.

AdSense

Google AdSense is google’s advertiser program.

It’s also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

AdWords

Google’s CPC (Cost Per Click) based text advertising. AdWords takes clickthrough rate into consideration in addition to advertiser?s bid to determine the ad?s relative position within the paid search results. Google applies such a weighting factor in order to feature those paid search results that more popular and thus presumably more relevant and useful. Google has also started taking into account the quality of the landing page and applying a quality score to the landing pages.

Agent Name

This is the name of the Crawler/spider that is currently visiting a page.

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript And XML

Algorithm

An algorithm is an operational programming based upon mathematics.

ALT attribute
is designed to be an alternative text description (provide a text equivalent) for images.
Alt tags

Google uses anchor text and links as non-equal votes of importance on a topic.

API

Abbreviation for Application Program Interface. An API is a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications; it determines how a service is invoked through the application.
ASP

An acronym for Active Server Pages, a Microsoft-invented, proprietary programming language for building dynamic web sites. ASP is also an acronym for Application Service Provider, a hosted service available via the Internet.

Back links

Back links are inbound links, these are incredibly important to the PageRank Algorithm

Banned

search engine blocks your site from appearing in its search results.

Banner Ad

A graphic image, usually a GIF or JPEG, that describes a horizontal position and size.

Bid management tool

Software or an ASP service used to manage bids

Bidding

Bidding means placing a bid, in seo often bid PPC.

Blacklist

Lists of often IPs to be banned. linked to bad actors.

Blog

Blog- short articles that do well in search. Blog often and regularly.

Bot

a search engine agent

Broad Match

Broad Match is a form of “keyword matching” and refers to the matching of a search listing or advertisement to selected keywords with other keywords mixed in or in different order.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization can also be used to refer to a person (noun) Search Engine Optimizer

PPC: Pay Per Click, e.g. pay for each visit.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing, the combination of two distinct disciplines SEO and PPC.

Organic SEO: SEO that is driven through innovation and enthusiastic public reception. Smart PR can drive Organic SEO.

Organic Results: Search results not including paid qualifiers or perhaps more specifically to some without location weight boost.

SEMM: Search Engine Market Management (what we provide) is an advanced form of SEM, where the goal is not specific traffic targets but revenue and ROI targets. One service we offer actually projects ROI to a high-confidence interval in advanced of campaign execution. Current & Former start-up CEOs, or those with strong marketing backgrounds, understanding of consumer behavior and optimization, intimate knowledge of business and technical SEO skill are required to execute such campaigns. SEMM and Organic SEO are premium services but they will likely return more than inexpensive outsourced SEO.

KW: Keyword

Location Boost: Search results tailored to specific ip regions with a high degree of localization weight.

RFID: Radio Frequency Identification Chip, Search giant Google currently employs NFC capability in Android, and Apple is also planning support for RFIDs. The amount information that can be gathered about a user and their spending habits will increase a great deal for each company. I’m unsure of how it will apply now but RFIDs may have an impact on Contextual Ad-serving and organic search results.

Performance Marketing: A way to pay for marketing retroactively based on actions

Social Media RFID: This is a cutting edge RFID Application the practice of utilizing RFID technology to automate social media and consumer applications, e.g. automatically checking into a Chipotle or a ski slope and keeping track of your runs, etc.

QR Code: Think of a barcode that can be scanned and pre-populates contact information or launches actions on your phone, such as opening a web page. QR Codes overlap slightly with RFID’s but RFIDs are much more powerful in terms of the information they can track and they don’t require line of sight (LOS) to actuate.

Trust Rank: This is an informal name for trust algorithms deployed by every major search engine. Yahoo did file a patent under the describing a “Trust Rank” Technology (I’ll search USPTO for it)

Topology: A description of linking to topical hubs. Imagine the most important pages on subjects like mountains.

PPA: Pay Per Action, you pay each time a consumer signs up, buys something, or executes a specific transaction. A fixed or proportional rate may be applied for compensation, e.g. $10 per signup or 10% of a sale. Commission Junction and other companies work on this model. Similar to Performance Marketing, however Performance Marketing usually denotes a higher quality campaigns for larger companies utilizing advanced predictors to establish a predicted ROI from SEM activities.

White Hat: SEO done by the letter of google webmaster code. This is exactly how google wants you to promote, and nothing more.

Grey Hat: SEO that may not be what google likes but its not illegal and they can’t penalize you for it. Because other people could do it to competitors to destroy their rankings.

Black Hat SEO: This is against google conduct, much more severe than grey hat. These items will get you punished, you have to bring this on yourself. Sometimes these activities are actually illegal.